Jerry Tracy, Celebrity Reporter

by Tinsley, Theodore A.

  There was a small scrap of black paper adhering to the bottom of the left leg. It became invisible when Tracy let the tilted chair drop flat. The paper was almost the same color as the dark-painted floor boards. That was why it hadn’t been noticed.

  Tracy scratched his left ankle lazily. His cupped palm passed under his gaze on the way to his pocket. He took out a package of cigarettes and lit one as he saw that Colling was watching him. Colling’s mouth twitched, but Tracy didn’t know whether that meant he had seen the pick-up or not. The fellow’s lips were always moving like that. It was an habitual gesture. Most of the time he turned it into a meaningless smile.

  Tracy knew little about photography, but that tiny scrap of paper in his pocket made him think of a camera. It was like the black stuff that came wrapped around camera film.

  Tracy was grimly certain that someone other than the girl had unscrewed those two bulbs. The blood from Vivian’s wound and the rigidity of her body made the time of her death fairly certain. She must have died hours earlier, long before dawn. A photograph under those conditions would certainly require strong light. If a killer with a camera had used a couple of photoflood bulbs. …

  Tracy got up from his chair, puffing deeply on his cigarette. He dropped ash in a tray on a low table, and continued to move about the room, scanning the floor for faint powdery traces of pulverized glass.

  “Sit down,” Fitz growled. “You’re making me nervous.”

  “Funny the girl should lie there without being discovered until I walked in. A .38 caliber gun makes a noise, doesn’t it?”

  Hal Bruce turned from the window. “That’s right. Why didn’t someone hear the shot?”

  “Were any of the tenants questioned?” Colling asked.

  Sergeant Killan’s neck turned a brick red.

  “It doesn’t mean a thing. The elevated is only a block away. And there’s a big trucking garage near the corner. The bang of a .38 would sound a lot like the backfire of a heavy-duty truck. I’ve already questioned the tenants and nobody heard nothing. My guess is that they’d lie if they had heard the shot.”

  “You’re not being smart, Jerry,” Fitzgerald murmured. “You’re just being anxious.”

  Tracy went back to the ashtray. A camera at the scene of a girl’s fake suicide could mean only one thing. Blackmail! Two men and a dead girl! A wise guy and a sucker. Without the sucker angle, a camera didn’t make sense. And for bait to hook the sucker, what better than a desperate little blonde from the sticks who had made a hopeful try for fame and had flopped?

  Tracy’s logic was partly an excuse for his own conscience, and he knew it. The ashtray on the table, however, made him catch his breath. There was a cigar butt lying among the gray litter of cigarette stubs and ashes. It was long enough for Tracy to identify it by its shape and smell. He smoked Corona Coronas himself. A cheap cigar butt usually smelled like an outdoor cesspool, but not this brand!

  The cigarettes in the tray were Camels. There were five of them, and all had lipstick smear on the tip. The set-up still didn’t show two men. But Tracy now was eagerness inside, like a bloodhound on the scent. He could feel the beat of his heart against his ribs as he gave Fitzgerald a thin smile.

  “Mind if I poke around a bit, Fitz?”

  “Go ahead, if it makes you feel any better.”

  There was a closet with one very good dress and a couple of cheap ones hanging beside it. A pair of shoes. One hat. A nest of silk stockings, most of them ruined by runs.

  Behind the bedroom was a smaller room that contained a washbowl and a toilet. The faded linoleum on the floor left a narrow crack along the wall. Tracy fingered the crack and found a flattened cigarette stub where someone’s shoe had crushed it. It was a Lucky Strike. There was no lipstick smear on it. Tracy found another, shoved under the warped edge of the linoleum.

  “Two men!” his brain whispered.

  It was still guesswork. Vivian could have smoked the Luckies. Or the Corona Corona guy. But Tracy knew darned few cigar smokers who liked cigarettes. And he knew what happened when you tried to give a Camel addict a Lucky—or vice versa.

  Tracy sounded tired when he came back to the bedroom. “I think I’ll beat it, Fitz.”

  Hal Bruce came over from the window and touched Tracy’s arm hesitantly.

  “We’re putting on the Amateur Hour tonight at the Paragon Theater. I—I’d appreciate it if you could drop around and perhaps—”

  “If I do, I’ll continue to tell the truth,” Tracy growled.

  “That’s all I ask,” Bruce said quietly. “This time we’ve got someone whose act I’d like you to watch. She’s—”

  “Her name is Thelma Wood,” Colling cut in. The announcer was smiling eagerly, apparently forgetful that Tracy’s nostrils were still pink from the punch he had landed. “This Thelma Wood girl is the best natural blues singer since Ethel Merman broke in.”

  Tracy wondered if Colling had seen him pick up the scrap of black paper. “I’ll try to make the show,” he told Hal Bruce.

  He went quietly downstairs, but not out to the street. Turning, he tiptoed along a dark hall and descended wooden steps to the back yard. He glanced upward and located Vivian’s window on the top floor. He estimated the drop and the distance from that window to the angle of a brick wall on the other side of the rear fence.

  He climbed the fence, after making sure that the yard didn’t contain what he was seeking. He found it at the foot of the brick wall. Two threaded metal sockets. There was a faint powdering on the stone pavement where thin glass had shattered.

  “Photoflood bulbs,” Tracy breathed, “or I’ve never had a hunch in my life!”

  He hurried downtown to the Daily Planet office and saw Dave Brennan. Dave was a news cameraman.

  “Paper from a film pack,” Brennan said when Tracy showed him the bit of black paper he’d picked up.

  Brennan explained to Tracy how film packs worked. After you shot a picture you pulled a tab and tore out a paper sheet. This turned the exposed film and drew a new one into position for the next picture.

  “What do you do with the paper?” Jerry asked.

  “Nothing. It’s no good. You throw it away.”

  You threw it away! And if you were careless and had allowed a chair leg to rest on the discarded paper, you left a flunk torn off when you grabbed at it in a guilty hurry.

  Tracy’s eyes wrinkled tight. “Thanks,” he told Brennan.

  The Daily Planet’s famous little columnist had no trouble that evening getting backstage at the Paragon Theater. The Amateur Hour was already under way on the stage. Ned Carlisle’s soothing voice was exchanging bland comments with a bumptious little fat man, who held a fiddle under his chin in front of a microphone. The fat pan was trying to be funny with Ned. The audience roared with laughter as the suave Carlisle topped the amateur’s feeble wisecrack and made him look silly. To Tracy, the fiddler looked like a phoney, planted for laughs. He was not surprised when the gong clanged and the performer shuffled from the stage with exaggerated despair. Crude stuff. But the audience ate it up. Hal Bruce was standing guard over a trio of jittery looking people beyond the wings. He grinned as he caught Tracy’s eye and motioned him over. “Spares,” he whispered, indicating the nervous trio. “In case the show runs short. Have you seen Thelma Wood yet?”

  “No. Which one is she?”

  “You can spot her better from the other wing. Next to the last chair on the right. Hurry it up. The kid’s due next.”

  Thelma was already singing by the time Tracy crossed behind the back-drop to the right wing. He heard her before he saw her. He liked her voice. It was rich, throaty, honeyed with sex.

  Her song faltered for a moment as Tracy squirmed noiselessly past a man who was watching the stage. Tracy wasn’t sure whether the girl was staring at him or the man into whom he had bumped. Her face jerked back toward the audience. She recovered her poise.

  The man growled under his breath: “Take it easy, stupid. Who the hell are you p
ushing?”

  Tracy was conscious of swift, instinctive antagonism. He didn’t like any part of this sleek, hard-panned guy. Dark, solid face with a barbershop flush under the tight skin. Black eyes and blacker eyebrows. Like a Hunkie from a mining town—except for his expensive clothes and the glitter of an expensive stickpin diamond.

  “Sorry,” Tracy snapped, and let his glance shoot back to the stage.

  The girl was Thelma, all right. The second chair on the stage was empty. She was facing the audience now, singing raw jazz with a gorgeous, throaty depth that made the orchestra accompaniment sound thin and tinny. Tracy felt the hair stir along his scalp. It was that kind of singing.

  She was a honey blonde. Her face was a little too long to be beautiful. She was wearing a pale green dance dress with capped sleeves, cut modestly high at the throat. She stood stiffly angular, without sway or motion, like a singer at a church social. That stance of hers did the trick. It killed the hot suggestiveness of words and rhythm. Once or twice she sliced a high note or slurred a phrase with the wrong impact. If it hadn’t been for that, Tracy would have tabbed her for a ringer, a professional.

  Tracy’s eyes glowed. He forgot to be cynical. This kid had everything but training.

  She finished in a tornado of applause. Even the dopes out front sensed talent when it hit them smacko like that!

  The girl took a breathless bow and started toward the wings. Tracy inched quietly forward along the shadowy canvas. He wanted to get hold of this Thelma Wood and pump her for a column. She was worth it!

  A hand spun Tracy, suddenly shoved him backward. The dark-eyed man with the stickpin strode contemptuously to where the columnist had stood.

  Thelma Wood saw the sleek guy grinning coaxingly at her. She halted on the lighted stage and backed away, fright in her blue eyes. The audience thought she was returning for, another bow and they rocked the house with applause.

  Ned Carlisle was smiling. He took the spotlight with the girl, but not the bows. He was a born showman and he knew how to build excitement.

  His bushy gray eyebrows seemed to quiver with delight. His wide-lipped mouth was stretched in an expansive grin. Thick, stubby fingers tousled his unruly gray hair in the famous gesture of artistic abandonment that always told a delighted audience this was really the time to let go—to whistle, stamp feet, raise the roof with yells.

  The audience took the cue. Ned Carlisle beamed paternally at the uproar. He didn’t wait for the applause to subside. It would continue as long as he willed it. Tracy knew Ned enjoyed a din like this as much as anyone in the crowded playhouse. But presently the stubby fingers waved a sweeping farewell that was a subtle tribute to the crowd as well as the performer.

  “The guy should have been in opera,” Tracy thought with a grin, as Carlisle escorted Thelma Wood triumphantly from the stage. But to the opposite wing.

  Tracy heard the dark-eyed man swear. He tried to block the fellow’s path as he whirled. But sinewy fingers tightened on Tracy’s windpipe and flung him backward. Applause from the theater drowned the crack Tracy’s head made against the floor. He swayed to his feet after a dazed instant, but there was no sign of his foe.

  Instead, he saw the pale, peering face of Freddie Colling.

  The commercial announcer had evidently witnessed the swift attack on Tracy. His eyes looked scared. He started to melt away in the backstage gloom. Tracy nabbed him before he could pull his quick sneak.

  “Who was that guy? Do you know him?”

  “No.” The lie was apparent in Colling’s nervous tone.

  Anger made Tracy’s word spurt like hard pellets. “Give me the lowdown or I’ll bat your ears off. You know him! You saw what he did to me. What’s his name?”

  “I—I think his name is Visco.”

  “What’s he doing back here?”

  “I think he’s a friend of—Thelma’s,” Colling gasped.

  A friend? Tracy’s jaw hardened as he thought of the fear he had seen in the girl’s face when she had made her quick retreat across the stage.

  “Don’t drag me into this,” Colling muttered. “I don’t know a thing about it.”

  Tracy left him abruptly. He ducked behind the backdrop and hurried to the other side of the stage. Thelma Wood was surrounded by a group of people, congratulating her. Her face was deadly pale.

  There was no sign of Visco. He had evidently hurried down the long exit corridor and vanished into the street through the rear stage entrance.

  Hal Bruce came over to Tracy. His face was aglow with delight. “What did you think of Thelma’s singing? Is she good or not?”

  “Good enough for a full length splash in my column,” Tracy said slowly. “Bring her over. I’d like to talk to her.”

  “Why don’t you wait for the sign-off? You can’t talk much here. Thelma’s a cinch to win tonight, and Ned Carlisle always blows the winner to a victory supper at the Terrace Club in Radio City. There’ll be oodles of big shots there. Why not come along?” Tracy said, “Thanks, Hal. I’d like to. By the way, do you happen to know a man named Visco?”

  “Visco? Who’s he?” Tracy described him. “Oh, yeah. I’ve seen him around, backstage somewhere. Somebody told me he had an in with our sponsor. They clutter up the place, but there’s nothing we can do. Remember, this is an advertising racket, not show business. What about this Visco?”

  “I just wondered, that’s all,” Tracy said.

  He continued to wonder after Hal Bruce buzzed away. He remembered the look in Thelma’s eyes. Those staring blue eyes of her made him think grimly of a dead girl named Vivian Laprange.

  Tracy had no illusions about the nattily dressed Visco. He could smell a dangerous crook six blocks against the wind. Was Visco the finger man in a brand-new radio racket? One that involved the pretty and inexperienced girls who won amateur contests? Tracy also wondered whether the dark faced Mr. Visco smoked Luckies.

  Radio’s Terrace Club was not a place, but a celebration party. The party was held twice a week, immediately after the Soapsud Hour went off the air. The winner of the amateur contest was feted and publicized at one of the two swank restaurants that abutted on the sunken terrace in the heart of Radio City. Ned Carlisle’s kindly personality attracted a host of important figures from the city’s night life. Ned threw these noisy jamborees with a friendly eye to the interests of his amateur winners. Once or twice a girl had been picked by one of the big Broadway impresarios who liked to drop in on Ned Carlisle’s blow-outs. No one in town was more pleased about that than Ned himself.

  Tracy checked his hat and coat in the lobby, but he didn’t go at once into the restaurant. He waited patiently until he caught sight of a very pretty girl. She was a brunette with perfect legs, practically no clothes, and she carried a cigarette tray suspended by silver cords that circled her bare neck.

  “Hello, Alyce.”

  “Oh, hello, Mr. Tracy!” Her voice was like creamed sugar. “Cigars, cigarettes?”

  She turned sideways as she offered her tray. The movement placed her face and her bust in profile. Both were good. Being a smart girl, Alyce didn’t ask Tracy for a boost in his famous Broadway column. She let her figure ask him for the favor.

  “How about a Corona Corona?” Jerry asked her.

  She made a pretty frown. Her laughter tinkled like a small, silver bell. “I only carry one brand of cigars, Jerry. You wouldn’t smoke it. Confidently, it stinks!”

  “What do the expensive cigar smokers like me do? Go without?”

  “People like that always carry their own with them.”

  “Do many smoke Corona Coronas?” Jerry’s tone was playful.

  “Oh, lots of them.”

  “Name three,” Jerry said promptly. He said it with a careless grin. His palm caressed her fleetingly, just short of the edge of insult.

  Alyce giggled. People crossing the swanky lobby glanced curiously at the pair. Tracy waved a greeting or two and then leaned close to Alyce’s ear.

  “Would you like a n
ice build-up in tomorrow’s column?”

  “Damn right!” Alyce said. She stopped smiling.

  “Then find out for me the name of every guy at the Ned Carlisle radio party who smokes nothing but Corona Coronas. Phone me the list at my penthouse tomorrow. Is it a bet?”

  “What’s a bet?” a smooth male voice interrupted.

  Freddie Colling had emerged from the inner door of the lobby. He grinned fleetingly at the cigarette girl, more steadily at Tracy. Hal Bruce was with the announcer.

  “Ned Carlisle was wondering if you had come over,” Bruce said. “He’s saving a place for you. Better come on in. Thelma is doing a couple of blue songs for the party. Without accompaniment, that’s how good we think she is.”

  Alyce moved off with her glittering tray. As she did so, she turned for, an instant toward the Daily Planet’s columnist. Her voice dripped with sweet conspiracy.

  “Don’t forget, Mr. Tracy. It’s a bet! Corona Corona!”

  Watching the quick twitch of Colling’s mouth, Tracy could cheerfully have kicked the shapely Alyce in her rounded rear. But his face was impassive as he walked into the club. If Tracy’s feeling was correct, there was some sort of hook-up between this white-toothed Colling guy and the dark-faced Visco. And Colling was now doubly aware of Jerry Tracy’s interest in cigar butts. He had watched Tracy at the dead Vivian’s apartment. He was watching him here.

  For the rest of the evening the Daily Planet’s columnist circulated deftly through the noise and joviality of Ned Carlisle’s big party. In a spot of this sort Tracy was always like an agreeable little flea in patent-leather shoes. He knew everybody and talked with everybody—theatrical men, sporting figures, big spenders who wanted to be seen and heard.

  He was puzzled by the absence of Visco. He had expected to see Visco’s natty, overdressed figure somewhere on the fringe of the celebration. Thelma, he noticed, kept glancing unobtrusively about, too. There was still a flick of worry in her blue eyes. She flushed and averted her gaze as she saw Tracy studying her.